Prize-Winning Radio Stories

Irish or otherwise, the odds are excellent that readers will recognize themselves somewhere in these 32 stories, the prize-winners from eight annual RTE (Radio Telefis Eireann) Francis MacManus Short Story competitions. Working class family life is the prevailing bent, with just enough departure to rescue the collection from conceptual doldrums. Universal domestic scenes and rites of passage are portrayed with an almost frightening realness, and the selection is remarkably consistent in its delivery of well-crafted, affectingly written pieces. The most striking sense of particularly Irish identity comes, at least for an American reader, from the music of their Irish English. Anyone looking for Irish landscapes, or cityscapes, won't be disappointed, but only Ronan Brady's ``When It Got Serious'' faces an experience so uniquely Irish as Ulster's infamous ``Troubles.'' Katy Hayes's ``Forecourt,'' with its controlled yet palpable eroticism, is outstanding, and would be in many other anthologies as well. Then there is Ursula de Brun's downright miraculous affirmation of a woman's life in ``Esther,'' the story of a just slightly remarkable afternoon in the life of a timid American housewife living in Dublin. Ivy Bannister and Joe O'Donnell are also worth the admission price, but in this company there is something for even the most jaded lovers of fiction. The only frustrating part is the book's glaring lack of notes on the writers and their work--an omission likely to weigh heavily on anyone wanting to know more about a contributor or their work. (Aug.)